Ahmad mahmoodi - the Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University bushehr , iran
Mostafa esmaeil beig - the Bushehr Branch, Islamic Azad University bushehr , iran

In this paper, Invasive Weed Optimization method is used to allocate optimal placement and sizing of shunt capacitors in radial distribution systems in order to improve voltage profile and loss reduction. Loss sensitivity factor has been used to find out the potential buses for capacitor placement. Shunt capacitors that are used for compensating reactive power are capacitors with step size of 50 kVAr. Two test systems, IEEE 33- bus and IEEE 69- bus, are considered in this paper and IWO method is applied to them. Results show that IWO method is more efficient than the other methods like genetic algorithm and PSO.

Shunt Capacitors, Radial Distribution System, Reactive Compensation, Optimal Placement, Optimal Sizing, Loss Reduction, Voltage Profile Improvement, Invasive Weed Optimization